Sustainability, Vol. 15, Pages 3017: A Software Framework for Predicting the Maize Yield Using Modified Multi-Layer Perceptron

Sustainability, Vol. 15, Pages 3017: A Software Framework for Predicting the Maize Yield Using Modified Multi-Layer Perceptron

Sustainability doi: 10.3390/su15043017

Authors: Shakeel Ahmed

Predicting crop yields is one of agriculture’s most challenging issues. It is crucial in making national, provincial, and regional choices and estimates the government to meet the food demands of its citizens. Crop production is anticipated based on various factors such as soil conditions and meteorological, environmental, and crop variables. This study intends to develop an effective model that can accurately anticipate agricultural production in advance, assisting farmers in better planning. In the current study, the Crop Yield Prediction Dataset is normalized initially, and then feature engineering is performed to determine the significance of the feature in assessing the crop yield. Crop yield forecasting is performed using the Multi-Layer Perceptron model and the Spider Monkey Optimization method. The Multi-Layer Perceptron technique is efficient in dealing with the non-linear relations among the features in the data, and the Spider Monkey Optimization technique would assist in optimizing the corresponding feature weights. The current study uses data from the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Data Bank to forecast maize yield in the Saudi Arabia region based on factors such as average temperature, average rainfall, and Hg/Ha production in past years. The suggested MLP-SMO model’s prediction effectiveness is being evaluated using several evaluation metrics such as Root-Mean-Square Error, R-Squared, Mean Absolute Error, and Mean Bias Error, where the model has outperformed in the prediction process with a Root-Mean-Square Error value of 0.11, which is lowest among all the techniques that are considered in the statical analysis in the current study.